Page 234 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

Media power, challenges and alternatives 213

mainstream news media and, perhaps more significantly, rely on them for
information on those topics’ (Haas 2005: 393). The web provides a means of
expression well adapted to collective forms of organisation (Bennett 2003); it
enables mass distribution of movements’ own media, with some costs transferred
to users. However the Internet does not overcome the challenges of content
creation and production costs, or the costs of attracting audiences and sustaining
participation (Owens and Palmer 2003).
Analysing how power works in and through media is a vital task for
researchers. To do so requires insights from political, economic and cultural
approaches, but it also requires connections to wider struggles for media
democracy. Critical political economy of communications marks out a dynamic
tradition that draws on past work, asks vital questions about media today and will
continue to revisit and reinvigorate answers. But its validity and value ultimately
resides in contributing to making a difference to people’s lives by advancing
communication arrangements for societies that draw from each according to
their abilities and support each according to their needs.
By exploring connections between how communication resources are organised
and how societies are organised, CPE provides the foundations for an inclusive,
integrative study of media and communications. Critical political economy provides
base nutrients for the revitalisation of media and communication studies for the
twenty-first century. Analysing how the production of media takes place under
the influence of political and economic forces remains a necessary foundation for
enquiry. CPE promotes asking big questions about the relationship between media,
capitalism and democracy. CPE’s concern to examine the transformation of media
also necessitates the long-range historical perspective and cross-disciplinary
engagements that the field of media studies requires. Critical political economy is
principally concerned with ‘problems’, and disposed to address these because
inequalities in resources affect all aspects of life, including culture and commu-
nications. Going forward, it is challenged to help explain in compelling ways
how these problems coexist with the pleasures and gains of communication, to
persuade a new generation worldwide to join in efforts to tackle and change, as
well as investigate, the problems of the media.